The invention relates to a waste fluorescent lamp dismantling method and apparatus for dismantling waste fluorescent lamps, and particularly a method and apparatus that conforms to environmental protection requirements and is capable of rapidly dismantling waste fluorescent lamps.
Fluorescent lamps are the most widely used lighting devices nowadays. They can be found almost ubiquitously in all kinds of places where lighting is needed, such as factories, offices and residences. In recent years, the growing awareness of environmental protection and conservation has made recycling and recovering of wastes a high priority issue around the world. The process and treatment of the huge amount of waste fluorescent lamps has also become an important concern.
Fluorescent lamps mainly consist of a lamp tube, aluminum caps and brass wires located therein, with mercury vapor and fluorescent powders contained in the lamp tube. During the recycling and recovery process, the aluminum caps should be separated from the lamp tube, and mercury vapor should be prevented from leaking or escaping into the atmosphere during the separation process. Hence, the process should be done in a vacuum environment.
The contemporary processing methods mostly involve disposing the fluorescent lamps in a vacuum chamber. Air is drawn out of the vacuum chamber to create pressure inside the chamber, and the fluorescent lamps are crushed and separated in the chamber. Such processing facilities have very high manufacturing and operating costs. Moreover, it is difficult to separate the aluminum caps and brass wires from the crushed lamp tubes. Hence, some present commercially adopted techniques employ flame cutting to sever and separate the aluminum caps. While such methods may separate the aluminum caps from the lamp tubes rapidly, they unavoidably cut off a portion of the lamp tubes along with the aluminum caps, resulting in waste. Furthermore, flame cutting consumes a lot of energy, and thus is not widely accepted.
There are some new separation techniques being proposed and developed suggesting crushing the fluorescent lamps in a vacuum tank by means of high pressure water. Mercury vapor and fluorescent powders are not released into the atmosphere, but are directly dissolved in the water. The another prior art proposes to crush the fluorescent lamps in a vacuum tank, then heat the crushed materials to 350 degrees Celsius to recover the mercury vapor.
Although the foregoing separation techniques are different from the conventional methods, because of environmental protection concerns they still have to take place in a vacuum environment to prevent mercury vapor from escaping into the atmosphere. Hence, they still have relatively high equipment costs, and the lamp tubes and aluminum caps also cannot be separated rapidly, The problems of recycling and reclaiming persist.
The primary object of the invention is to provide a waste fluorescent lamp dismantling method and apparatus to resolve the foregoing disadvantages, and to separate the aluminum caps from the lamp tubes quickly and effectively.
Another object of the invention is to provide a partial vacuum means of collecting mercury vapor, to thereby greatly reduce equipment costs.
The waste fluorescent lamp dismantling method and apparatus according to the invention is to clamp two ends of the fluorescent lamp adjacent to the aluminum caps, and to form an airtight seal between the clamp locations and the aluminum caps. Then turn the aluminum caps at the clamp location to separate the aluminum caps from the lamp tube. This apparatus consumes less energy, and in order to meet environmental protection requirements, a vacuum is created only between the clamp locations and aluminum caps, When the aluminum caps are being removed, the mercury vapor is collected to prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere. As the invention employs a partial vacuum around the aluminum caps, equipment costs may be greatly reduced.